Simple Pleasures

My blogs are all pretty philosophical so I thought it might be nice to lighten things up a bit. As I review my friends blogs, I notice how fun they are to read, short and sweet, lots of pics and happy thoughts. So here goes. Today was a great day. I'm tired because I'm 7 months pregnant, but I have to say it was a successful day and that I earned an "A" as wife and mother.

We started early with family prayer, got everybody breakfast and helped Dad clean the car until he got a little frustrated with Calla and Isabel climbing all over the seats he was trying to vacuum. We came inside and got warm and let him finish in peace.


On to the life-size doll house extravaganza. We had to replace a vanity in our house to get it ready for renters. (Oh I forgot to post we've moved and we're renting our house out while we house sit for my parents while they're away for 18 months. This is what happens over two months. Sorry for not keeping up to date. Read about it in your Valentine which I sent you this week.) Anyway, the vanity box had a great window shaped rectangle in it and it inspired Calla to recycle. We've done this before with our jumbo diaper boxes, but we've only made doll-size houses before. Today we took the counter top box and went through a roll of moving tape, used some of our moving boxes and wala! (sp?) We officially have completed Calla's vision. It was a labor of love but she seems to be pleased with it, flower box out the window and all. She was a good helper, holding the walls in place while I taped.



Isabel napped through most of the project, but was somehow at some point able to find her way to our dresser drawer which she loves. There she finds deoderant, perfume, jewelry, and her very favorite chapstick. I know it's her favorite because she walks around with it, with the lid off, sucking it and saying, "Mm. Nummy." Yesterday she finished off a fruity Blistex ministick. Today she was starting into my favorite, peppermint Chapstick. Luckily I heard the "Nummy" in time and was able to give her something else to chew on. This was the simple pleasure I deliberately found today. It made me smile. I love to hear Isabel expressing herself.


Happy news. We think we've leased our house out. Our future tenants signed a lease today and put down the necessary deposits. They will move in on Saturday. Hope they enjoy the fun backyard and not so fun kitchen. We might have to modify that a bit later to keep them happy. Love to you. E

Primary Chorister

I wish I could take pictures of the primary for you. I had my chance at the primary Christmas activity, but I forgot my camera. In October I was released from serving in the Young Women's presidency at the bishopric's request. We needed a new chorister. After only having been in Young Women's for about 6 months or so I wasn't sure how to take the news initially. Of course I was happy to go where they needed me, but I was so excited to help light a fire under the girls, to give them a sense of their eternal opportunities and help them establish a strong foundation for good moral choices leading to the temple. We had just extended a really spiritual Book of Mormon challenge and I was excited to see that through to the end of the year.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by the change. I watched the Church's Video on how to teach a song to young children and I have just become so passionate about the music. I remember most vividly the songs from primary. I think that is where my young testimony really took flight. Most specifically singing "Families Can Be Together Forever." I am convinced a person can be a great chorister, despite my initial fear, just by being willing to practice the songs ahead of time and then open your mouth and sing them when it's time to teach.

This year the primary program outline is entitled "My Eternal Family." We will be singing some of my very favorite songs, including "Families Can Be Together Forever." I know as I knew at an early age that this is the purpose of my life: to develop eternal relationships. Heavenly Father knew me as a child and knew I would come to understand this truth more profoundly with each new phase of life and the accompanying challenges. What a gift for him to help me understand it sooner than later so that I might withstand my trials more faithfully. I am so grateful to David for transforming my life and to Calla and Isabel for transforming it again. E

Isabel's Christmas

It's been a long while and Grandma Anderegg motivated me to post on our blog. Not sure how many people are viewing it, but we'll assume somebody is. Especially now that Grandma and Grandpa Spencer are in Mexico. They are serving their third mission as Area Medical Advisors in the Monterey area. Hopefully they'll get online and check us out.

We put up our tree for Family Home Evening last week, but Isabel had a hard time not picking the berries and pine cones off the tree. I was getting stressed out about the money we spent on the tree and wondering what was going to happen once we put our nice decorations on it and Christmas was not starting out on a good note. Isabel's association with Christmas trees is "No. No." I would say it very frustratedly and then Calla was my little enforcer. When Isabel would walk past the tree and point and raise her voice and say "No. No." Calla would worriedly usher her away. I knew something wasn't quite right. I went to bed a little disappointed in myself and frustrated with Isabel. After sleeping on it, I discovered that it wouldn't matter if the tree was missing half of the tips on the bottom. We won't even have this tree in five years I'm guessing. I felt what was more important is that Isabel have a happy, joyful feeling as she learns about Christmas and that she feel a secure place in our family as she explores and tries things out and establishes her relationship with her sister Calla. Sometimes I feel a bit out of patience because I've been there done that with Calla and I forget that Isabel is doing this all for the first time and I need to try and give her the space to learn and find joy in her discoveries as I did with Calla rather than thinking about the aftermath, the cleanup, teaching responsibility, appearances, etc.

So in honor of Isabel and my newfound respect for her newness and a deeper understanding of Christmas, I post the picture of our tree: a 3 foot tree wonder we bought for Calla to decorate last year. So that everybody can have a hands on tactile Christmas tree experience this year and mom doesn't get too caught up in the performance of a beautiful, no-kids tree. So that we can focus on the meaning of Christmas and not the trappings (even though Christmas trees are not really trappings and if you could only have one decoration for Christmas, a tree would be it!) Please enjoy the two matching D.I. chairs that frame the tree. I still haven't been able to invest in great furniture, nor do I want to considering we're going to rent out our place next year. More on that later.

I'm also posting our nativity. Our one and only truly heirloom decoration thanks to Grandma Anderegg. I can put it up high enough so I can enjoy it and it's still safe from little fingers. Please note the green wall behind the fireplace. Yes, I painted the room yet again, but this is the last time. I didn't want renters to come into to a rainbow house and think the house was a fun house that they didn't have to take care of. We have an officially all green house now, walls, carpet. I will hire a designer to think through these agonizing, costly decisions for me with our next house or just paint it all white.

News: We're expecting our third baby girl. We didn't know that the last time I posted on the blog. We had an ultrasound on Tuesday, 19 weeks. We're due April 30, just one month before Isabel's second birthday.

My brother Jon got married in October to a beautiful girl named Heather. We're so happy for them to begin the journey. And it is undeniably a journey. We are grateful to be on it although we literally feel stretched at times. This stretching and growing is essential. What a blessing to feel your progress. I think that is a tender mercy of the Lord amidst large challenges. I think about the pioneer stories and the description of coming to "know the Lord in our extremities." We've been at extremes for so long that it almost doesn't feel right when things lighten and get easier. However, I am grateful for the blessings we see coming our way.

I wrote down a thought I had several months ago as I was processing my life (as I often do) and struggling to feel more grateful and recognize the Lord's hand in my development individually and our development as a family. I thought clearly that when we feel stressed and challenged it is important to endure it for a while, to put some time in and we'll figure it out, rather than force a change. We can learn through a process of discovery rather than a process of resistance. Sometimes we don't see things as clearly at the beginning as we do at the end. I also learned that instead of looking with despair at the road ahead, I needed to look back to see how far we've come: missions, college, marriage, children, home owners. It's a pretty good list as far as I'm concerned and for some reason lists make sense to me. We really are learning and growing and doing. I need to have confidence that the Lord will always watch over us and provide for us as long as we are striving to obey the commandments. 

Understanding and choosing submission is the great lesson of adulthood.  Although we were born to it, we naturally outgrow this divine attribute. Maybe we come as helpless infants so that we can get some practice early on to allow us to one day return to it.  I feel we will be tried further to learn humility to bear the the Lord's will, to heed the counsel of a prophet, to align our lives with "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", to live within our means. I hope that when the time comes I will be practiced enough to naturally and joyfully kneel at the Savior's feet. 

In the meantime I am grateful for the lessons and joys of motherhood. I wish I was more keenly aware of my daughters' feelings and patterns of learning. I hate to hurt them. But I get better at mothering as Dave becomes more involved in his role as a provider and I I have more experiences with the girls. I truly feel this is what I was sent here to learn, to put myself on the back burner and take care of the needs of my children before my own, to care more about their feelings than my own. That doesn't really jive with today's prescriptive of "Me. Now." but I feel it is right and righteous and I desire to master it so it is an effortless expression of my true and refined nature.

Love to you. E.

Lightning from Heaven

We just came back from an Anderegg Family reunion in Deer Valley. Thanks Grandpa Jerry for the fabulous accommodations and giving us rides on the boat. Calla tried the innertube for the first time and enjoyed it until a big bump at the end. We left our camera on the car so I don't have any good pics of that. Oops. 

Dave and I watched Dan in Real Life with Grandma Cathy. We really enjoyed it. I think Juliette Binoche is hands down one of my favorite actresses. Steve Carrell was great too. I love that scene in the bowling alley when they're acting like teenagers flirting with each other. I must have felt that type of energy and excitement at some point in my adolescence because I remembered it and smiled as I was watching the film. What a neat moment to begin loving another and losing yourself.

I read a really neat article that I'm really stoked about. It's entitled "Lightning from Heaven" an d appeared in the BYU Magazine Summer 2006. Here's an excerpt:

" 'The Great Man,' said Carlyle, 'was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.'

Joseph Smith ignited something in thousands of men and women that connects them to God and to each other in powerful ways...His message resonated because it was a stirring and compelling and exciting synthesis that presented a spiritually hungry humankind with a god who was not a threat to human potential but a being who gloried in that potential and whose work was to bring it to fruition. That was why Joseph's message resonated and caught hold like a burning fire...

Like Brigham Young, they knew Joseph was human and subject to err, but they sampled his words and agreed they tasted like honey. They weighed the beauty of a God and of human origins and of a human future unlike anything before imagined. They found reason to doubt, and they found reason to believe. They chose to believe." Link: http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1851

I recommend reading the entire article. I felt it powerfully illuminated our relationship to God and why Joseph Smith was so pivotal in his plan. It increased my testimony that the Church is truly a godsend and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I choose to believe it.

New family pics. Thanks to our dear and acommodating friend Lisa Ashby, www.freewebs.com/ashbyphotography

Isabel's First Birthday

Well we made it. Isabel turned one. I survived the year and so did she. Isabel has decided to start loving life and we have really begun falling in love with her as her little personality takes shape. For the birthday we hosted a cake and ice cream open house. Lots of cake and lots of ice cream. Lots of kids and lots of dirt still in the backyard. Thanks for letting them all come anyway! Isabel loved the balloons and she just giggled when she would get hold of a string and it would bounce up and down in her hands. She is crawling full steam ahead now. She's taken some time getting to this point. I guess she wanted to be fully prepared. Now, three weeks later she is pulling herself up on things and venturing up the bottom steps. Look out! 

Calla is growing up at a clipping pace. She enjoys recognizing and writing letters. She loves to hear stories and tries to read some on her own. She loves to play with friends. Dress ups is clearly a favorite past time and so is play dough. Oh and movies! She can't get enough so we have to do some limiting here. PBS kids plays a large part of our week. She starts preschool this fall at Hillcrest High. She'll go twice a week and I think she'll really enjoy it.

Dave has been blessed with some great business opportunities. He had two buyers show up out of the blue last week and put two contracts in, one of which was accepted readily. Hooray! He is also helping a few people look for homes. It takes a while to help people find the right fit, but he enjoys it. He is also really enjoying Primerica. He goes out on appointments in the evenings and has a weekly training meeting. I have to admit that I am starting to enjoy it too. Dave has felt so strongly that it is the right thing for him to do that after 6 months I have had to stop fighting him on it. I've seen some really neat people that he gets to work with and I've caught the vision of what this opportunity really could mean for us. Dave has been asking me for months to go with him to his weekly meeting and I have not been willing to go. Finally with trepidation I went two weeks ago. I was really pleased with what I saw. Very family friendly. I went and I took both our girls. I wasn't happy about getting a sitter so I could go to work with Dave. I have felt strongly about not working and taking time away from mothering. But I have also struggled with not being able to see much of Dave throughout the week. Trusting Dave's leadership and just going to the meeting really paid off. We will plan to go each week with from now on.

I am trying to engage with the Young Women and be a good mentor and model. I get a little impatient sometimes with the immaturity, the lack of leadership, the complaining attitudes and exclusive behavior. I  know this is my calling and need to help the girls see the bigger picture outside of themselves, to help them take an active role in deciding their future, and help them reach out to others. I taught the lesson last Sunday on Temple Marriage and it was harder than I thought to share the doctrine of the New and Everlasting Covenant. It was hard to know for sure if the girls from part member families really understood how important it is to get married in the temple to receive all of the promised blessings rather than limit your blessings based on the choices of others in your family like parents and siblings. I hope they feel as strongly about it as I did and do.

Wednesday before that I was in charge of the activity. I presented the healthful diet concept of volumetrics and shaped the information into a Choice and Accountability value experience and project. Hope some of them go for it. I know I need to.  

Last week seemed a bit hectic with two YW obligations, the birthday party, finishing the tramp retaining wall, ripping out old shrubs in the front yard, etc. I think I need a break. I'll add pics later as Dave has the camera in the car. E 

Dooramp Preseason

Well the Doo season is approaching and the court preparations are underway! We dug the large gaping hole in the backyard last year. Maybe a little premature? We enlisted Grandpa Spencer's help two weeks ago to cut the wood for the retaining wall, Dave assembled each module and this last Saturday Dave, Tim Dahley, and Bret Gold spent the afternoon assembling the wall. It looks pretty good so far. Next steps: back fill the ramaining space, scrape our old grass off and grade the yard, save up enough money for sprinklers, install sprinklers, install new sod, Play Ball! We can't wait.

Genetic Engineering

Try this one on for size. Dad sent us a picture of our family and we were struck with how much Calla looks like Dave except for such and such and how much Isabel looks like Emily except for such and such. Go figure, I guess it must be because there is 50% of both of us in each of them. Anyway, we thought if we could just switch Calla's eyes (which are definitely Emily's) with Isabel's eyes (which we think must be Dave's) then the new face should look like Dave 100% and the new Isabel, with Calla's eyes must be 100% Emily. Nnngh! Wrong. We're just glad Heavenly Father knows what he's doing. How amazing that each of us looks so unique, but at the same time we resemble a distinct family. The blending must take place on a molecular level. Until we learn the secrets of the universe, we'll just switch noses and eyes. Check out the photo. Who are these two children?